


Black Rope

by professortennant



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rope Bondage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-30
Updated: 2018-09-30
Packaged: 2019-07-20 13:11:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16137947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/professortennant/pseuds/professortennant
Summary: After Jack flashes back to his torture with Ba'al during a mission, he enlists Sam's very specific help to overcome his reaction to something SG-1 encounters often: restraints.





	Black Rope

The locker room is cool and dark when she slips in and finds him sitting hunched over on the bench, staring listlessly at the heavy bandage around his left wrist. Sam knows she shouldn’t be here, knows it’s tempting to fate to be alone with him in a room with no security cameras. 

 

But the shit had hit the fan four hours ago and she’s not entirely convinced that he’s as okay as his flat smiles and irreverent sense of humor seem to indicate. She’s tired of not being there for him when he needs her in this way. 

 

She sits next to him wordlessly, lets the touch of her hand on his knee and the press of their thighs together speak for her. They’re better without words most of the time, anyway. Tentatively, she reaches for the bandages on his wrist, fingering the edge of the wrapping. 

 

“This can’t happen again.” 

 

He exhales harshly at her words, like he’s angry that she voiced what he already knew. “I know, Carter,” he grits out, jaw tight. She recognizes him like this: angry and drowning in self-recrimination. 

 

“You panicked.”

 

He flexes his jaw at her statement but doesn’t say anything, just stares at her fingers stroking over the bandages around his wrists—the same bandages that cover the deep lacerations along his wrists and the red rope abrasions on his skin. 

 

_It certainly wasn’t the first time SG-1 had been arrested, restrained, and tossed into a dank cell and forgotten about. But it was the first time Jack O’Neill had grown pale and shaky, pulling at the restraints and jerking so violently against them that the ropes cut into his skin and drew blood._

 

_Jonas and Teal’c had looked immediately to Carter to take control of the situation as the Colonel spiraled rapidly out of control. This was the new secret of SG-1: the way Sam had ordered Teal’c to restrain the Colonel to stop him from hurting himself further and the way she had knelt in front of him with her hand on his cheek as she called to him—“Sir! Sir! It’s okay. It’s fine. Sir—Jack!”—in an attempt to bring him back to the moment._

 

_Back in the infirmary, Carter had been the one to stoically tell Frasier that it was just the off-world guards who had been rough with the Colonel, cutting off her commanding officer’s confession. He’d looked at her sharply and Janet had raised an eyebrow but bitten back an argument, simply choosing to wrap his wrists and dismiss him from the med bay._

 

“I’m _fine,_ Carter. It won’t happen again.” 

 

It sounds more like he’s trying to convince himself instead of her. She frowns and pushes, toeing the line of subordinate and commander in only the way she— _they—_ can. 

 

“Because you’re going to talk to Mackenzie?” Silence. “ _Sir?_ ”

 

He pushes himself up off the bench and runs a hand through his hair, the white of the bandages stark against his silver hair.

“I’ll figure it out, Carter.”

 

There’s nothing more she can do but watch as he grabs his keys and jacket from his locker, slams it shut, and storms out—leaving her behind.

 

__________________

 

 

Later, her house is filled with the music of a soft 70s radio station and she’s a glass of wine or two into her night when the knock she’d hoped for but hadn’t truly expected came. Opening the door with her heart in her throat, she finds him standing stoically on her front porch, hunched in on himself and looking uncomfortable and uncertain. 

 

“Sir,” she greets softly. 

 

“Carter.”

 

They stand like that for a moment, silent and awkward. He doesn’t make a move to push into her home, doesn’t explain what he’s doing here when they both know why he can’t—and shouldn’t—be here. 

 

And then she notices the rope in his hand. 

 

He coughs and rubs the back of his neck, awkward and unsure. “Can I come in?”

 

She looks between the bandages on his wrist, the soft-looking black rope in his hand, and finally at him. Everything about him radiates tension and uncertainty, a little desperation, a little fear. But the look on his face is so open and wanting, _trusting_. Whatever it is he wants, he wants it from her. 

 

And she’d never been able to tell him no—not really. 

 

So she opens the door and steps aside and wordlessly invites him in. In the handful of times he has been in her home—and it’s only been a handful; they’re careful, so, so careful—he had filled every nook and cranny with his charm and confidence. It had made her sometimes too-empty home feel full. But tonight, he is deferring to her, waiting for her. 

 

“Take a seat,” she says, taking charge and directing him through the entryway to her living room and onto the couch that every member of SG-1 has crashed on at one time or another. He sits, rope still clutched in his hand, at the very edge of the couch. 

 

She feels his eyes on her—sharp and probing and waiting—as she sits on the coffee table in front of him so they are face-to-face. But he doesn’t say anything and that awkward silence falls over them again. 

 

“Do you want a drink?” she offers, anything to break the strange tension. “I’ve got wine or—“

 

“You told me to figure it out,” he interrupts, finally finding his voice and cutting her off. “I figured it out.”

 

“Okay,” she says slowly. 

 

He fingers the black rope, forefinger and thumb worrying the material, before taking a deep breath and holds it out to her. His eyes meet hers, steady in the face of her parted lips and wide eyes. 

 

“Sir, what—“

 

He interrupts her again. “I can’t—“ He stops and clears his throat. “I can’t react like I did back there on PX-whatever. So I need to replace the bad memories with something good.”

 

Heat spreads over her cheeks and neck as the implication settles over her. _She_ is the something good. 

 

But still, she hesitates. “Sir, I don’t know if I’m qualified. I have no idea how to do this safely or without making it worse. You should talk to Mackenzie. He’ll—“

 

“Carter, I don’t need a damn shrink. I just need—“ _You._ She hears it as loudly as if he’d actually said the word. “I just need to be reprogrammed, right? Like a computer.” He gets excited, eyes lighting up like he’s finally found the words in her language to convey what he’s trying to say. “I need a reboot.”

 

She frowns as he pushes the rope further towards her. Sighing softly, knowing there’s no chance in hell he’ll ever actually wind up in Mackenzie’s office and she’s better than nothing, she reaches out and takes the rope from him, letting her fingers brush against his. 

 

“What do you need, sir?”

 

Now that she seems to be on board, he relaxes back into the couch a little, elbows resting on his knees and hands falling loosely between his legs. 

 

“Tie my hands.”

 

She sucks in a breath, knowing the words were coming, but being affected by them all the same. Despite the situation and reasoning, the command to tie Jack O’Neill up is enough to make her shift and press her thighs together to alleviate a sudden rush of arousal. 

 

“Okay,” she breathes out, fiddling with the rope and peering up at him from beneath her lashes. “Before we do this, we need a safe word or something. The second you feel like you did back in that prison you need to tell me, okay, sir?”

 

He rolls his eyes good-naturedly at her. “What happened to not being qualified, Carter? You sound pretty qualified to me.”

 

“Safe word, sir," she insists, voice strong. She can't screw this up.

 

“Okay, okay. How about _Homer_?”

 

Grinning at him, she nods and ignores the flight of nerves and butterflies in her stomach. “ _Homer_ , it is, sir. Okay.” She licks her lips and takes a deep breath before standing, inadvertently placing herself between his legs. 

 

Jack looks up at her from his seated position and gives her a crooked grin. “Tell me what you need me to do.”

 

She raises an eyebrow and raises the rope between them. “This is your show, sir.” 

 

With more bravado than she would have expected from him, he raises his bandaged wrists between them. “Just bind them and—and we’ll go from there, okay?”

 

The concentration and focus she applies to wrapping his wrists with the long, black rope is akin to the concentration and focus she applies to her doohickeys in the lab. It wraps around his wrists, pinning them together, before she carefully wraps the remainder of the rope in-between his wrists.

 

“I don’t know if I’m doing this right,” she confesses, grimacing when he hisses and jerks out of reach. The rope is pressing a little too tightly into his bandages and against the still-fresh lacerations. She apologizes softly and loosens the rope. 

 

“You’re doing fine, Carter,” he reassures her, voice suddenly rough and tense. 

 

When the rope is secure around his wrists comfortably, she sits back down on the coffee table and watches him carefully. He stares at the black rope against the white bandages while the sounds of The Eagles filter in around them, her radio still playing music softly. 

 

“Do you want to-to talk about _why_ you had the reaction you did in the first place?”

 

He shoots her a look, face twisted in an expression that tells her explicitly that he has no intention of telling her anything. She gives him a look—that silent communication that they’re so damn good at.

 

Shifting against the cushions, Jack falls back against the couch and lets his bound hands fall more comfortably between his splayed legs. Sam waits for him, doesn’t push—not yet. 

 

“Ba’al liked restraints.” It seems to cost him something to say it and she can see the way his body tenses, the way his eyes are dialed in on the rope around his wrists. “There were these ropes he’d use—“ He stops and collects himself, gritting his jaw so tightly the cords and tendons in his cheek and neck extend. 

 

She leans forward and covers one of his hands with hers, the silent support all she can offer to get him through whatever it is that has been weighing on his heart. Jack had been stoically mute about his experiences while in Ba’al’s captivity. 

 

“The ropes would tighten the more you pulled against them. There were times when I thought they’d cut through my hand but I didn’t want to stop fighting. And then he’d use these knives and—“

 

She grips his hand tightly, breath picking up quickly. She’d thought about what he’d gone through; wondered what he’d experienced. And now she was learning. 

 

“God, Carter,” he breathes out, gripping her hand. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been tortured like that. Not since Iraq. I—“

 

And then it seems like something cracks open in him, the same something that cracked back in that prison, and he’s breathing harshly and holding onto her hand and staring with wide, wild eyes at the ropes on his wrists, pulling slightly and trying to loosen the restraints.

 

Sam wants to pull the ropes off his wrists and push a can of beer into his hands and make it okay for him. But he hasn’t said _Homer_ and she wants—needs—him to get through this.

 

She falls to her knees between his legs and covers his wrists with her hands, fingers stroking over the place where rope, skin, and bandage meet. “Sir,” she says loudly, trying to bring him back to the moment and suddenly it feels like they’re right back in that alien prison. 

 

But this time he seems too far gone and beneath her fingertips she can feel his pulse racing, skin throbbing with the force of his heartbeat. He’s looking down at her between his legs without actually _seeing_ her.

 

Her hand slips up to his cheek, stroking insistently over the day’s growth. “Sir— _Jack—_ it’s okay. It’s okay, you’re okay.”

 

Sam keeps her voice soft and soothing, reassuring. But his eyes are wild and he’s tugging at the rope. Perhaps it’s his words— _replace the bad with the good—_ that made her do it, she’s not sure.

 

Either way, she finds herself leaning forward, her hand falling from his face and wrapping around his forearms to still his movements. Her lips—soothing and comforting—press to his pulse, the tip of her tongue pressing against his skin. 

 

Jack’s breathing seems to falter and finally— _finally—_ his eyes focus on her. She watches, looking up at him, as he takes her in: between his legs, fingers pressing into his skin, and her lips hovering above his wrist.

 

“Carter?” he breathes, harsh and a little less wild, but still strained. “What are you doing?”

 

Later, she’ll blame it on the wine (even though she’s barely had enough to warm her veins). But she wants to _be_ there for him in a way that she hasn’t been allowed. For the last six years, Jack O’Neill has been her rock, her constant. When the world was ending, he was there at her side with a quick quip and a solemn nod. 

 

It was her turn to return the favor.

 

“Replacing the bad with the good, right?”

 

She lowers her head to his wrists again to press another soft kiss to his skin. They’ve never touched each other like this before—a conversation about locked rooms and regulations a few years ago had all but guaranteed that. 

 

But here, kneeling between his legs with his hands bounds and looking for all the world like he expects Samantha Carter to save the world—save him, she _wants_ to touch him. 

 

With his hands bound, touching her is difficult, but he manages to get his fingers along her jaw and cheek. “Sam,” he chokes out. She hums and hushes at him, turning her head to let her lips glide along the skin of his wrist, nuzzling down over the rope and bandages and kissing the veins of his forearms. 

 

“I’ve got you,” she reassures him. She thinks back to the desperation she felt when he’d been missing, when she’d been told what was likely happening to him. She thinks of the guilt she’d felt and makes her own statement of repentance. Maybe this is about her healing, too. “I didn’t then, but I do now.”

 

“I know you do, Carter.” He tangles his hand in her hair as best as he can with his hands bound. “C’mere.”

 

She raises herself on her knees and catches his eye, does as she’s commanded. He may be bound, but he’s calling the shots now. He leans forward and nuzzles his nose against hers, his hands trapped between their bodies and his fingers reaching out to stroke her abdomen through the thin fabric of her v-neck. 

 

“This okay?”

 

Her lips twitch up into a smile and she reaches for him, one hand on the knot of the ropes that bind his hands and one hand on his knee. Using him for stability, she presses forward and murmurs against his lips, “More than okay.”

 

Finally, her lips cover his and he groans against her, the earlier fervor back—but different and transformed. It’s not the panic and terror from before; instead, it’s passionate and desperate. He kisses her like he _needs_ her. Lips push and press against hers, tongue licking over the seam of her mouth and sweeping over her own tongue and teeth as if cataloguing and memorizing the taste of her. 

 

Sam’s teeth graze over his bottom lip before she returns the favor, her tongue sliding over his and into his mouth, sighing at the feel of him. The hand she has on his knee slides tantalizingly higher up his leg and she thinks about sliding the flat of her palm over the hardness she knows she’ll find at the front of his pants. Instead, she nips at his lips and makes a detour to settle her hand at his hip.

 

Breaking the kiss, she leans her forehead against his and simultaneously strokes her fingers over his hip and wrists before gently tugging at the black rope. “Homer?”

 

He tilts his head, the movement forcing their noses to brush and nuzzle each other’s softly. “Replacing the bad with the good, right?”

 

And then he’s tugging her forward by her shirt, pulling her up and into his lap, chuckling softly at her small _eep_ of surprise. Falling back into the cushions with her weight settling over his lap, he reaches up with his still-bound wrists and cups her chin and cheeks, thumbs tracing her bottom lip. 

 

“You got me, right, Carter?”

 

His brown eyes are dark and searching, his voice soft and she feels like the center of Jack O’Neill’s world with his hands on her face and his focus on her. 

 

She traces the line of his brow with the tip of her finger, dipping and tracing over the bridge of his nose. “Yeah,” she says, softly. “I got you.”

 

It’s not traditional and it’s not an _I love you_ and it’s not necessarily romantic. But it’s _them._ It’s a promise: _I’ll be there for you. I’ll have you. Always._

 

She shifts and lets her knees fall on either side of his hips. The movement brings their bodies closer and she gasps as the hardness in the front of his pants presses against her center. He groans and presses his mouth against her fingers, hips jerking. She knows that even through the layers of fabric that he can feel how hot and damp she is between her legs just as surely as she can feel his cock against her. 

 

It’s a flurry of movement after that, at time simultaneously frantic and languorous. Her hands slip over his body, taking time to trace the veins in his forearms and the muscles in his biceps, trailing over his chest and up over his neck and jaw and into his hair, nails scraping at his scalp (which she learns, with a thrill, makes him keen and gasp into her kiss). 

 

His hands, though bound, manage to get her shirt pushed up so he can feel the warmth of her skin along her abdomen and hips. He grins into her soft kiss when his nails catch along her waistband and she shivers and presses closer to him. 

 

They’re teetering on the edge of making out into something more and she can’t stop her hips from circling and pressing down against him, rubbing along his hard length and searching for more heat and friction. When the head of his cock presses against her clit, she gasps and jerks against him and breaks the kiss, hissing his name out. 

 

“ _Jack, God.”_

 

He presses carefully up into her, watches the way she bites her lip and throws her head back and circles her hips, seeking out her own pleasure.

 

“C’mon, Sam,” he encourages her, voice rough and commanding. For the first time since she wrapped that cord around his wrists, he feels in control. 

 

All he feels is her.

 

“With me,” she gasps, hands slipping beneath his shirt to scratch at his stomach, fingers stroking over the line of hair that leads to his waistband. He groans and pushes up against her, seeking the heat and dampness between her legs. 

Sam kisses him then because she can’t _not_ kiss him, not when he’s hard and hot between her legs and he’s panting against her, lips pressing to the exposed skin of her chest and collarbones and groaning out her name. 

 

“Please, please.”

 

She’s not sure if that’s her or him, but it’s all too much and not enough and she wants his hands on her. Like he’s reading her mind, he kisses her soundly, tongue stroking the roof of her mouth, and his hands working at the waistband of her yoga pants, pushing the fabric down and out of the way.

 

And then his hands—bound as they are—are on her. Pushing aside her damp panties (and he’ll be cocky about how fucking wet and useless they are later), he presses his fingertips against her clit until she keens and presses forward, forcing his fingers to slide against her and through her wetness. If it didn’t feel so damn good, she’d be embarrassed at how wet she is, how slick and throbbing and hot and _wanting_ she is. 

 

But then he’s crooking a finger just against her entrance to tease her and his thumb presses against her clit over and over again, making tight circles until Sam’s shaking in his arms and chanting his name. 

 

Sam knocks his bound hands away and pushes them up over his head. Kneeling forward and dragging her now-exposed pussy against the hard length of him, she rocks against him, setting a punishing pace. 

 

“Close,” he grits out, straining and thrusting up against her. She leans down and slants her lips over his, teeth biting down into the plushness of his bottom lip.

 

“Almost,” she assures him, circling and pressing and climbing, climbing, climbing that precipice of pleasure until she’s right at the edge. She looks down at the commanding officer beneath her, bound and hers and looking up at her with dark brown eyes filled with trust and lust. 

 

Her eyes catch sight of the place where Jack’s wrists are wrapped in white bandages, black rope, and her own fingers and that sight combined with a hard thrust up against her, the head of his cock brushing over her clit _just right_ has her spiraling over the edge into her orgasm.

 

She buries her face into his neck and kisses and gasps and bites down against the salty skin there, licking at the pulse throbbing erratically. 

 

Sam feels Jack groan and strain beneath her, feels his trousers grow damp as he comes in his pants with her name— _her name—_ groaned out low and low on his lips. 

 

They’re both breathing hard, coming down off a pleasurable high, and pressed together. He stretches against her and jerks his hips softly, murmuring in her ear, “ _Homer.”_

 

She laughs and tucks her face against him before sitting back and sliding off of him. He grins at her and his bound hands fall into his lap. Silently, her fingers pluck at the solid knot between his wrists and she slowly unwinds the black rope. 

 

When his hands are free, he tangles a hand in her hair and strokes a thumb over her cheek. She sighs and turns her hand into his touch. The questions and guidance she needs from him are swallowed down for another day, another time. 

 

This was about him—not them.

 

Discreetly, she tugs her yoga pants back up and she grimaces at how wet and slick she—and her pants—are.

 

“Carter?”

 

The rope is still between her fingers when she looks at him. His face is open and relaxed, the darkness in his eyes gone, leaving behind only the light brown eyes she’s become accustomed to; the ones she loves. She reaches a finger out and traces the line of his jaw. 

 

“You’re okay?”

 

He raises his eyebrows at the question and looks down at the wet spot before grinning lasciviously at her. “More than okay, I’d say.”

 

Pink tinges her cheeks and she ducks her head, pleased. She catches his wrist in her hands, a parody of the touch from the locker room, and traces a finger over the place where bandage and skin meet.

 

“And this?”

 

He shifts his hand and twists to tangle their fingers together, their hands fitting together as nicely as the rest of their bodies. “Consider the bad replaced wholeheartedly with the good.”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Yes,” he assures her in the way only he can, his voice a mixture of command and control. 

 

They stay like that—wet spots and tangled hands and all—for a few minutes before things get sticky and uncomfortable.

 

“I should go,” he says. Sam thinks she hears a tinge of regret there, like he wants to stay. But for everything they’ve done, there’s still a room and regulations and a war to save the galaxy keeping them apart. 

 

“I know,” she says softly. She hopes he can hear how much she wants him to stay, too. 

 

Wordlessly, she holds out the black rope to him. They don’t need it anymore and he seems pretty confident that the incident back on that planet won’t happen again. She believes him.

 

It doesn’t stop him from staring at the rope with the kind of intensity she’s become accustomed to seeing in the field, eyes dark for an entirely new reason. He pushes the rope back at her. 

 

“Keep it,” he commands, fighting a smile and shrugging. “You never know when we might need it.”

 

She stares, open-mouthed at him for a moment. He tucks his finger beneath her chin and pushes her jaw up, closing her mouth, before leaning down and brushing a soft kiss to her lips. 

 

“Thank you,” he murmurs against her lips, kissing her again. 

 

When he leaves her, the door shutting softly behind him, she’s left with a new hope that he would be okay. That _they_ would be okay.

 

She’s left with hope and a length of black rope.


End file.
